On 5 June, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir declared a six-month state of emergency in Warrap State and Mayom County in Unity State, authorising sweeping security powers justified under 'restoring stability' after a spate of violence in late May. Following intense political violence in Nasir against the White Army earlier this year, the latest emergency decree – and the disarmament campaign that followed – are part of a broader strategy aimed at violently consolidating regime control in the fractious peripheries. And so, amid Kiir's regime succession planning, the ruling clique of Dinka politicians has sought to quash any remaining opposition through its mass arrests and military campaigns in Juba and outside its control, and simultaneously redirecting resource flows to the capital.
Healthcare workers across Ethiopia launched unprecedented strikes in 2025, bringing an already fragile system to its knees. Beginning mid-May, over 15 ,000 doctors, nurses and other health workers across the country conducted a strike to protest chronic low wages and deteriorating working conditions. By late May, the strikes had spread nationwide, paralysing whatever was left of the public hospitals and clinics.
Since the collapse of the Somali state in the 1990s, the country's private sector has played a particularly prominent role in service delivery, flourishing in the cracks left by the absence of a central government. In this space of the ungoverned economy, those providing essential utilities — such as healthcare — were assumed by businesses and economic cartels, which have reaped immense profits in turn amid the vacuum. However, in the years since, as the state-building process has gradually attempted to deliver or centralise such services, the incestuous relationships between business cartels and rent-seeking politicians have persisted. And in the meantime, the fractured and uneven nature of healthcare providers in Somalia continues to pose severe dangers to the population.